1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for synchronously depositing articles onto a moving conveyor, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for feeding unpitted drupaceous fruit, such as cherries, from a feed hopper onto a continuously moving conveyor which conveys the unpitted fruit to a pitting station.
The disclosed apparatus was particularly, although not exclusively developed for feeding individual pieces of drupaceous fruit, such as cherries, prunes, plums, olives and the like, into spaced fruit-receiving receptacles mounted on a continuously moving conveyor for further processing, such as pitting. It will be understood, however, that the method and apparatus of the present invention may be effectively utilized in many other applications requiring the feeding of discrete articles from bulk onto spaced locations on a continuously moving conveyor without relative motion therebetween. For ease of description, the articles fed will be referred to as cherries, for which the apparatus was designed.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art teaches many types of fruit pitting machines. Intermittently operated machines have proven relatively slow and are subject to vibration and mechanical failure. The more modern pitting machines generally operate continuously and many such machines employ continuously moving conveyors having spaced friot-receiving or fruit-supporting cups mounted thereon. These cups transport the individual fruits to a pitting station where the pit is removed by forcing a needle-like knife or punch through the fruit to push the pit out the other side. The cup is then moved on and the fruit is dumped or emptied into a hopper with other pitted fruit leaving the conveyor and empty cups free to return to receive another unpitted fruit to be taken to the pitting station. Such conveyor systems are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,243,246; 2,406,311 and 2,635,662.
The prior art also teaches many different methods for feeding or depositing the individual fruit from a feed hopper into the fruit-supporting cups of the conveyor. The above-referenced patents teach various methods for feeding fruits into the cups, and additionally, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,360,412; 2,413,861; 2,759,509; and 3,212,545 teach various other examples of feed mechanisms for supplying the unpitted fruit from a central hopper or supply into the fruit-receiving or supporting cups of a moving conveyor.
Some of these systems may prove adequate for intermittently fed conveyors or for conveyors which move relatively slowly. This type of feed system however limits the overall speed of operation of the pitting machine since it can operate no faster than cherries are fed to the pitting station. Additionally, as the speed of the conveyor is increased, the cherries tend to roll or hop out of the fruit-receiving cups and fall into the interior of the machine and possibly into the pitted fruit bin. Some of the types of hoppers cited above tend to bruise or damage the appearance of the fruit through abrasion and pinching as the conveyors and feed mechanisms are accelerated. Furthermore, mis-feeds will occur in which no unpitted fruit is supplied to the conveyor and this lessens the efficiency of the overall pitting operation.
The present invention sychronizes the speed of the cherry in the direction of motion of the continuously moving conveyor so that there is no relative motion between the two, thereby insuring that the cherries fed into the fruit-receiving cups remain therein. Furthermore, the present invention accomplishes this at a much higher rate of speed than was previously thought possible without damaging the texture or appearance of the fruit.